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Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2, ACT I Sgt. Prokhor Nazarii Hellhound-Alpha Squad, UOP PSTF 13 Febuary 2051 A small part of the world is a weird part. Many people are so afraid of it, people tend to stop thinking about it and forget. But a few are afraid and concerned. Concerned that it may crawl around the world. So that few combat the weird part of the world. They are the Paranormal Situation Task Force. I, Prokhor Nazarii, am part of the proud few. I wanted the recruitment because battle is the only place I can go with my soul undisturbed. At home, my talents were not so prominent amongst people. They said I was too dark-minded to do anything. I could survive but no one thought so. Nearly everyone hated me; they were too cheery every day to accept me. Everything that makes them frown amuses me and everything that makes them happy made me frown. So my interest in psychology and battle lead me to the PSTF. Shadowy, faded and divine—perfect military. “Hey, you might need this.” Cpl. Bauers throws me my helmet. I respond with a catch and a thank-you gesture. No talk. Just the way I am. I almost “like” it. We board our aircraft, our XC-32, through the back, to fly to an area of “erratic activity” (at least what I am told). Well, that is what the PSTF is for. We are the bravest, craziest, and perhaps most renown division of the UOP’s armed forces. We have been exposed to the worst of scenarios more horrifying than any of those Spetznaz, SAS, or any other special operations military force have encountered, regardless how strong and “fearless” they may be.. Supposedly. But today, maybe only seventy percent would be true. But only for today. Bear that in mind. So we make use of the scarce seventy percent of truth and put it to show. The XC-32 takes off vertically. The lift pushes me down into my seat, but only for some second’s time. One from our squad, Pvt. Medley, is stomach sick today. “Aah, I hope my breakfast stays down.” “Wait until this thing crashes. Then hope for your food to stay in your stomach,” Cpl. Bauers juts back. He is always the team’s suck-up. “Hey children, no fuss-talk. We’re already in deep enough crap. Would you want any more? I thought so.” I yell back, before I put on my helmet. “Hey, where is my oxygen reservoir?” “I put in your backpack. Did it fall out?” Bauers again. I take my pack off. There, attached to its right side, was the reservoir. It was a small, but highly compressed oxygen tank surrounded in a woven polyester pocket, with a pipe sticking out from the top. I join the pipe to my helmet’s valve. Fresh air valve open, tank air valve closed. Doesn’t feel routine today. Something is wrong; it’s just not happening at the moment… “So, what or who are we fighting today?” Bauers asks. I clear my throat. “A school named Jenlink Middle apparently has been evacuated due to a presence of some form of mutated animals that apparently tried to extend their gene pool to a few unlucky human victims that were left behind—these animals are addressed as BTAs; Biologically Tampered Animals, discovered by UOP intelligence. They can vary in as many varieties of animals as man can grab, each with their own unique abilities. Some smell, some scream, some blow up. All shapes and sizes. Some are bigger than us. Some are afraid of us.” I raise an eyebrow, a gesture questioning their attention. I then continue. “Our goal today is to find the cause/mast of this… whatever the hell you want to call it. Simple enough?” “Quite a speech,” Pvt. Medley quietly says. “Sounds as scary as hell. But at least we’re trained to do shit like this,” Bauers goes on. “We’re getting close to LZ by one and half miles and up one, ready up,” the pilot tells us. “Not only that, but they may be-“ I hear this loud crash near the left wing of the XC-32. It shakes the whole plane. “Hey flyboy! What the hell’s happening?!” I yell to our pilot. “I don’t know! I caught a glimpse of it… it’s some sort of flying bug! What the…?” Our plane starts spiraling down. Several more bangs hit the sides and nose, one or two on the right wing. I grab a parachute. “Hey, you others! Grab a chute too! We’re going to bail! Go! Go! Go!” Pvt. Medley jumps first. He disappears into the faint fog. Immediately after Medley, Cpl. Bauers jumps next. I stand there, waiting for our unknown-named pilot. “Aren’t you coming too?!” “Look, you three are the soldiers! You go! I would not help you so much! I’m just a damn pilot!” he continues. Another bang near the tail occurs. It leaves a small dent. “Hey, you have all the fancy high-explosive weapons at your command-“ “This is a troop transporter! How would it have weapons?! God dammit, jump already! You want to die too?!” I look at the rear hatch, and then my multi-purpose watch. Its altimeter says +1130 feet. I take a final glimpse at our pilot and then jump out, back first, eyes closed. “See you later,” I mumble to the pilot. Outside the plane, I am falling with my limbs stretched out, but on my belly. I open my eyes and look around. Gray clouds loom above me with smatterings of sunlight seeping through the clouds’ cracks, the middle of my vision are hundreds, maybe thousands of flying beetles with wings shaped like bats’. They flew in a ring formation, some flying clockwise and counterclockwise, and flew very fast, maybe forty miles per hour. They apparently are still hammering our abandoned plane. “What the hell?” I ask myself. I release my parachute. It violently pulls me up, then my body’s inertia diminishes. I remember seeing those bugs before, when I was still very small and living on a farm in Russia. They took my father’s hard worked corn and just devoured in swarms by the acre. We lost nearly all of the year’s profit and could hardly feed each other for nearly two years. Somehow we managed with each other. Somehow… Next thing I noticed was this loud rattling/buzzing, first soft, then quickly louder and louder, was present. It was coming from my left. I look in that direction to see one of those airborne bat-beetles charging to me. There was absolutely nothing I could do at that moment. At about twenty feet away from me, it turned up a little and tore through my parachute. It was soon falling down like our plane; the parachute is made of tough polyester. It must have snapped the bug’s neck veins and cords. So down I fall, around 300 feet in the air or so, with Pvt. Medley near me. He yells, “Sergeant, what happened? Your parachute is-” I next see only black. Soon after, my eyes open. I see someone. Someone, with his hands on my shoulders, shaking me. My vision clears up. I see one man dressed in gray PSTF armor like me. “Sergeant! Sergeant Nazarii! Prokhor!” Do I remember him? I think. Why are we here? My eyes involuntarily go to the right. A green flare rests over a small pile of rocks. It was still burning. Suddenly, I remember everything. Everything! So I turn to Pvt. Medley, the person shaking me earlier. “Ha, we arrived on spot,” I say to him in a raspy voice. “Dead zero.” I get up. “My stomach still hurts,” Pvt. Medley whines. “I have a hellish headache. And my back hurts. What about you, Bauers?” I ask. Cpl. Bauers looks at me for a second and says, “My head, soul and ass all hurt. I feel great.” Bauers apparently knows how to use sarcasm well. He points to the center of my body. “You landed on your behind, by the way. I feel your pain.” “How flattering. Now about our plan, Bauers.” I say back. He nods and pulls a holograph projector out of his backpack and lays it on the ground. It shines up a 3D map of the school. “We can enter via the front entrance, it’s clear of enemies inside and out, but it’s fa-a-ar away. Or, we could breach the west entrance, where we are by, but I can see large enemy presence.” He points to another door on the holographic map. “There is an east door, but it appears to be clogged by some sort of biological mass.” “The door with the enemies, then,” I say. We get to the door. Bauers lays some C4 along the door. “Stand back, boys,” he mumbles. BOOM! The doors are now bits. Inside, a upright cockroach runs away from a carcass of something. The halls howl with emptiness. The halls are empty of everything, except of light. I could see the sewing classroom. “Where to start, peeps?” I jaunt. “That room fifty-some meters in front of us. Go,” Bauers gawks. We cautiously trot to the classroom. Three feet away from the sewing classroom, there is a 4-way hall. I stop. “Sarge, what’s the matter?” Medley questions. I turn to him. “Hey, Medley—you check the art and cooking rooms to our right. Bauers, you go the left hall to see the restrooms to the right. Something weird-ass is going to happen in this room, I know it. Let me handle it,” I say back. “Are you… fine. Yes sir.” I clutch my sub machinegun, my issued MP37. On it is attached a reflex sight and a suppressor. New recoil dampening technologies enables it to fire incredibly fast yet maintain accuracy and generating no muzzle lift. Mechanical perfection. So, I step further, scanning the room for any suspicious elements. I turn back and fourth, hitting and opening every shelf and cabinet. Nothing yet. Then one last cabinet with a door sits in front of me. I swing it open. A large, orange-red and hideous bug, what appears to be something like a ant the size of a small child, lunges at me. It knocks my MP37 out of my hands. Its small but sharp claws grasp on to my shoulders and abdomen. It’s screaming into my face, as its bloody jaws ineffectively try to clip at my masked and goggled face. Remember your close quarters training, I thought to myself. Hook, snatch, pop. I throw my right fist across my body slamming the ant’s head, stunning it for a moment. Then I expand my hand, grasping the creature’s head. I gauge its eyes with my index finger and thumb. I throw it to the ground. It starts this full-body spasm and squeals. Pop, I remind myself. I raise my right foot and crushes the hideous thing’s head. Green, slimy blood gushes out its body and onto my boot. “Yuck,” I mumble. I collect a DNA sample from the ant’s body into a vise and stow it away. I walk out of the room. I radio the other two. “Bauers, Medley, status?” Bauers goes first. “Clear restroom.” Medley follows. “Art room has a human corpse. Want to study it?” My left eyebrow raises. “Be right there. Out.” “Following you, Sarge.” Bauers runs to me. We arrive at the art room. Medley is probing a dead, partially rotted body on a table with his ceramic bladed knife. “It’s creeping me out. Do you have the faintest idea on what this is?” Bauers chuckles as he gets a clear look at it. “Jesus Christ! I sure am happy I have a gas mask.” I step closer to the corpse. “Hmm… doesn’t look like that person died fast.” I study it. Rotted face, eyes closed, frizzy hair. T-shirt and pants, one tennis shoe. Bloodstained body. Appears to be a teenage girl. I then see glimpses of the girl. She sits on the table behind us. Black hair, tall figure, wearing a black skirt and a blouse. Then I hear her laugh. The image of her starts smiling, waves goodbye and disappears. My brain then reconnects with reality. I noticed my whole body was stiffened a few seconds ago. What have I been eating? “Sarge, what’s your answer? Hmm?” Bauers asks me. “What’s your question?” I snap back. “I said, was this a student here?” he hastily replies. “Likely enough. She looks fourteen-fifteenish years old. Get some DNA samples.” I pull out a scraper. Essentially, it’s a pair of scissors with shovels at the end instead of blades. I grab a piece of flesh from the dead body’s stomach and put it into another vise, until an arm-sized worm, with no eyes but a mouth full of human intestines, bursts out of the body. I drop the vise as it breaks and lunge back. The worm sways back and forth, hissing. It slings to Pvt. Medley and bites at his neck, but does not coil around Medley’s body. Medley wrestles with it, but the worm does not give up. I grab my MP37 as Bradley pulls out his Tornado axe, an antipersonnel axe about one and a half feet long. He chops the worm in half as red blood leaks between the two halves. The front part releases Medley and squirms around, leaking blood all around. I raise my MP37 and fire a burst. The small storm of maybe five or six bullets tears the worm apart. It stops all movement. “I’ve had enough,” Medley stands up. “No more close calls like that.” We exit the art room and blitz through the hallway and find nothing, except for blood splats and foul odors. As we reach the cafeteria, there is a stage. I peer over to see more of nothing. “Kitchen,” I command my squadron. I stow away my MP37 and pull out my M31, my old but trusted 6-gauge pump-action. shotgun. I cock it as I kick open the door. Nothing lies in front of us, except another creature. I raise my shotgun, then realize that the creature is actually a human. An alive human. He has a shotgun too, except probably a smaller gauge shotgun used by civilians for hunting. “Who are you?!” he yells at us. “Sgt. Nazarii. We are part of the UOP PSTF sent to investigate this area.” The man squints and then widens his eyes. He lowers his shotgun. He then shakes our hands. “My name’s Tom. I used to be a custodian here. Until this happened.”